The Cause of Japan

I do think that Japan's incursion into China is not so different from US intervention in central and south America in the 1930's. Japan did have legitimate concerns with the spread of communism into China and with a lack of a stable central government.
I recently was reading a bunch of 1930's US Congressional hearings into strategic raw materials and the US's increasing need for non-domestic sources of quite a few. I think it not coincidental the the Pacific rim was the predominant source for most of them. I was also struck by how much pull Standard Oil and US Steel wielded. US Steel pretty much prevented the US manganese market from getting similar governmental protections and economic incentives. This was in order to maximize their profits by exploiting cheaper Asian labor for lower manganese prices when if the same tariffs and policies the steel industry enjoyed were extended to domestic manganese production, we could have developed that industry to the point of self-sufficiency and have it competitive price wise even with higher US labor costs.
Standard Oil employed many unethical tactics, throwing their weight around and virtually doing what they wanted, ignoring the governments, laws and regulations in other nations they operated in and any that stood up to them were vilified in the American Press.
The Japanese did have elements within their Army that were pushing for expansion and war, but the US also had influential political, industrial and military segments pushing for the same. I really do think the majority of the civilian Japanese government and the majority of military leaders were looking to avoid a wider conflict and many actually wanted to extricate themselves from China. Look at the central governments decision to refuse to reinforce Japanese forces at Khalkhin Gol to avoid an open war with the Soviets even though many in the IJN were pushing for military expansion into and seizure of Soviet territory in the far East and Siberia.

 

I must respectfully disagree. Much of the impetus for the expansion into China had to do with the influence of the Zaibatsu, Japanese industrial/financial groups. The Mitsui Zaibatsu had particularly strong influence within the IJA and within the Rikken Seiyūkai, a major political party in the 20's and early '30's. The Zaibatsu's were very influential in the formation of the governments foreign and domestic policies and in shaping public opinion. They held a similar but not as strong a position as the Council on Foreign Relations enjoyed with the US Government and the shaping of our governmental foreign and trade policies. They also engaged in efforts to shape US public opinion to support their positions.
Most of the variation in how the foreign policies of the governments were influenced by commercial interests goes back to the unique circumstances surrounding the formation each nations government. These unique characteristics became culturally ingrained and I do not think either side fully comprehended the internal workings of the other. In the US, a nation that fought for independence from a nation that enforced its rule through a strong standing military, there was seen the need to prevent any future government from using the military as a means of enforcing its will upon the citizenry. Power was solely vested in an elected government and the military was a separate entity controlled by elected officials. When modern Japan was formed the greatest threat was not an oppressive indigenous government, but from expanding western imperialism. In order to protect their civilian government from control by outside influence the Constitution provided that the military enjoy independent and equal status with the civilian government. So while we have the Executive, Legislative and Judicial Branches that serve as checks against one another, but only limited authority over one another. What happened with Japan is that one branch of government, the IJA (think of it in this case as the US President) decides upon an action and sends troops in, the civilian government (think of it as Congress in this case) does not authorize or approve of the action but has little power to halt the action except to protest, deny resources for its continuation or rally public support against the action.
This is not intended to be an accurate description of the intricacies of the Japanese form of government, many aspects of which are also similar to the British form. It is only intended to illustrate to those that view events through the lens of how our government works, that there are a whole different set of mechanics when viewing the Japanese up through WWII.
Where Standard Oil (and other business interests) lobbied the President, Congressional and State Department Officials to protect their interests in Mexico at the turn of the century, the Zaibatsu's could lobby the IJA directly. Where US governmental actions taken with regards to unrest in Mexico led to greater and greater involvement in Mexican affairs that culminated with the Tampico Incident, Veracruz Expedition (1914) and The Punitive Expedition (1916-17), the same thing happened in Manchuria when political instability and warring between factions threatened Japanese business interests. In both cases internal meddling led to increased involvement by the respective governments to protect private business interests.

 

It doesn't bother me either.

 

That's my understanding as well. In fact right before the US cut off the oil, many within the Army were hoping that during Gozen-kaigi that the Navy would say they couldn't defeat the US if the situation resulted in war. That would allow the IJ Army to agree to withdraw from China as demanded by the US. If this failed then they hoped the Emperor would step in and perceive their "honne".
I recently read a scholarly treatise by Omi Hatashin, of Waseda University, Tokyo on Japanese decision making in WWII. I wanted to understand the subject from within the Japanese culture not from my western perspective. He went into depth explaining two distinctive Japanese cultural traits, honne which roughly translates to "true wishes" synonymous with personal opinion in our culture and tatemae which is community or organization opinion. One was expected to maintain the harmony of ones organization or community. It was interesting reading, here's an excerpt:

The army’s intentions
Post-war testimonies of the navy leaders concerning the events in the last week of
Konoye’s Cabinet, around 10–16 October 1941, gave revealing testimonies of the army’s
true wishes (honne): for example, the War Minister, Lieutenant-General Tojo, informally
approached the Admiralty Minister, Vice-Admiral Oikawa, and asked him to say
that the navy could not possibly fight the Americans [Shinmyo, (1976), p.181]. The
contemporary Chief of the Naval General Staff, Admiral Nagano, too, was asked in
private by his army counterpart, General Sugiyama, to say that the navy could not fight
the USA [Shinmyo, (1976), p.140]. Around the same period, General Hata, the then
Supreme Commander of the Japanese Expeditionary Forces in all the theatres in China
made it known to the Cabinet Office that he was happy to withdraw from China
[Shinmyo, (1976), p.126]. The Chief of Staff of the Japanese Expeditionary Force in
Northern China, Atomiya, visited and requested the Admiralty Minister to avert the war
against the USA, saying that the forces in China were happy to withdraw [Shinmyo,
(1976), p.126]. The army’s records are not entirely contradictory: Tojo suggested to his
navy counterpart, “if you have changed your mind, we shall go along with it”; and Tojo
had ‘a casual chat’ (zatsudan) with the Army Chief, saying “we have to change our mind
if the navy do not feel strong enough to fight” [Sugiyama, (1967), p.351].
The army’s ostensible position (tatemae) was manifested on 12 October 1941, in a
meeting of the Prime Minister, the War Minister, the Admiralty Minister, the Foreign
Minister, and the Planning Authority Director. The Admiralty Minister (Vice-Admiral
Oikawa) asked the Prime Minister to decide whether to make peace or war, and
Prime Minister Konoye said he would like to continue diplomacy. This made the
War Minister (Lieutenant-General Tojo) very angry, because the army’s true desire
(honne) was to withdraw from China on the ground of the navy’s weakness, as shown
above. Tojo remarked that the Prime Minister could not overturn the resolution of the
imperial conference (Figure 1 and Appendix) of 6 September 1941 [Sugiyama, (1967),
pp.345–347], in which it was decided that if there was no reasonable prospect of success
in negotiations with the Americans by the first ten days of October 1941, the imperial
high command and government should make up their mind to fight the USA and
Great Britain, and the armed forces should ready themselves to fight by the last ten days
of October [Sugiyama, (1967), p.312].....There was a precedent in which the navy had managed to pull the Japanese army out of
Russia and thereby eased tension with the USA: Admiral Kato signed the Washington
Naval Treaty 1922, formed a cabinet and succeeded in pulling the Japanese army out of
Russia’s Far East by 25 October 1922. Therefore, it was somewhat ‘constitutional’ to
expect the navy to restore law and order. However, the mutiny of 1936, which massacred
the cabinet of Admiral Okada, who was then trying to cut the defence budget, represented
a great source of fear on the part of the navy leaders, too.